News

Windows Can Help Mirai Botnet Spread

Windows computers may allow cybercriminals to spread the Mirai infection by searching for other vulnerable devices.

Cybercriminals are turning to Windows computers to help the Mirai botnet find more devices to infect and expand their target list, says Forbes. Their intention is to allow the infection to spread further and faster.

The Mirai botnet, which was responsible for last year's crippling attack on sites like Amazon, Twitter and Netflix, can carry out large-scale Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) tools and infect exposed devices. Through Windows computers, hackers can further their goals by using the Mirai malware to scan other network ports for more vulnerable devices and infect them, too.

Forbes adds that when it targets Windows machines, Mirai malware can show more malice than just infecting others. It can alter the Windows registry, create and delete files, and cause damage to SQL databases.

Dark Reading's Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

An exploitable command injection vulnerability exists in the measurementBitrateExec functionality of Sony IPELA E Series Network Camera G5 firmware 1.87.00. A specially crafted GET request can cause arbitrary commands to be executed. An attacker can send an HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability...

In Eclipse Vert.x version 3.0 to 3.5.1, the HttpServer response headers and HttpClient request headers do not filter carriage return and line feed characters from the header value. This allow unfiltered values to inject a new header in the client request or server response.

In Eclipse OpenJ9 version 0.8, users other than the process owner may be able to use Java Attach API to connect to an Eclipse OpenJ9 or IBM JVM on the same machine and use Attach API operations, which includes the ability to execute untrusted native code. Attach API is enabled by default on Windows,...

Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and Intel software guard extensions (Intel SGX) may allow unauthorized disclosure of information residing in the L1 data cache from an enclave to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis.